Learn what you have As you should be able to pick up from the title, this post is about learning what you have, specifically with regards to spatial data. This post is the second in the GIS for Small Cities series. The first discussed brainstorming uses for GIS and spatial data at your city or organization. If you are reading …

Discussion Today’s tip came to me after I was trying to link some tables into my database, from another database. What I saw in that database looked something like this: ce410ap sf200xp jj310fe Repeat this for a couple of hundred tables. This structure, I feel, is a holdover from the old days of taking a database and normalizing it to …

During a recent weekly Twitter chat about GIS, a GIS industry colleague asked for some thoughts about selecting and planning an Asset Management System. That question sparked a discussion between Nathan Heazlewood and myself. What follows is an expansion on that discussion. This post looks at the reasons and requirements for implementing an Asset Management System; what software you might use, whether COTS or a custom system, and how to get started. Finally, we wrap it up with a discussion of the need to have buy in from your supporting departments, the need to work with subject matter experts to determine what assets are important, and lastly, the need to keep it simple. Only do as much as you need, with the knowledge that you can add more as you go along.

Discussion If you are like me, and if so, I apologize and sympathize, then you probably have a few layers that you use all the time. These are likely part of your base layer set that you include in most of your maps. For me, these include parcels, roads, the city boundary, and aerial photos. WHen I include these layers, …

Accessing data in QGIS A few years ago now, I wrote a post covering adding vector layers to QGIS. Much time, development, and improvement has passed since then. Since the usefulness of QGIS increases proportionally with your ability to actually add data to it, it is time to revisit this topic. QGIS has a toolbar strictly for adding data. It …

Today’s Tip Use only the data layers you need to make your point Discussion This tip arises as a way of fighting the shiny object syndrome. You know how it goes, you get a new data layer, or new aerial photos, and you want to include them in everything. So, you do, whether they should be there or not. I’m …

Today’s Tip Keep focus on data by attending to details of border and map layout. Discussion Today’s tip comes out of an experience I had with our city manager. He stopped by to ask me to create a map for him, then asked if he could stick around and watch me while I did. Once I verified that I had …

Today’s Tip Define and stick with logical directory structure for file-based data Discussion In every mapping related job I’ve worked, one issue that always arises is data management. Unless you have a spatial database implemented already, the likelihood is that the majority of your data is in some file-based format. Heck, even if you have a spatial database, you are …

Today’s Tip Create indexes for all spatial and attribute tables Discussion Today’s tip arises as a result of setting up layers using a Foreign Data Wrapper in Postgres. The layers were initially loading quite slowly, and I realized that I had not added a UniqueID, which I mentioned in TOTD 002, or any sort of an index. Before we get …

Today’s Tip Ensure that you have a unique identifier attribute for each table in your database Discussion This is another tip that arises from me doing a task, and realizing I forgot something critical. In this case, the task involved creating a table, trying to perform an operation on said table, and encountering an error or limitation due to a …